


Eternal Winter

by betweenheroesandvillains



Series: The Palinode of Armitage Hux [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Bleakness, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Disabled Character, Implied Past Character Death, Implied past torture, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sniper Armitage Hux, implied abuse of dead bodies, implied past suicide attempt, tagged for safety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 04:59:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13697346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenheroesandvillains/pseuds/betweenheroesandvillains
Summary: He had left his youth somewhere on a Star Destroyer, a planet, a throne, not once believing he would see old age. Now, old age had caught up with him, and he had even begged it to.





	Eternal Winter

**Author's Note:**

> “We have time to grow old. The air is full of our cries. But habit is a great deadener.”  
> \- Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

His days always followed the same pattern, and he was careful not to break it.

Hux would wake up, his mind racing. It was not good at staying still; it had never been. He had, over the course of the years, come to terms with the fact that it would probably always be like that. That he had lived too much of his life under pressure, always having to be perfect, always having to please.

_He used to make a lot of plans. He used to write everything down, to give everything a meaning and a place and turn it into something. He had done it on Arkanis, on the Finalizer, on Starkiller. He had made elaborate plans, had designed and re-designed his revenge, constructed ruses and complicated manoeuvres._

But times had changed. Hux woke up, and waited, and felt the gentle pressure against his thoughts that slowly, steadily, extinguished them.  
It used to feel like death.  
Now, it only calmed him.  
It couldn't be healthy, he thought. He also thought that at least, this one had been his own choice.

His fingernails dug into his palms, nudged the edge of scar tissue. _His decision._ the words still tasted bitter, a memory of pain and blood he worked hard not to entertain. So he turned, twisted over his right side until he could sit up. Fit his limbs into the invisible space, the patterns for his routine. The bones in his hips and shoulders clicked in place a moment late. This, too, was a pattern by now. He had left his youth somewhere on a Star Destroyer, a planet, a throne, not once believing he would see old age. Now, old age had caught up with him, and he had even begged it to.

Hux shook his head and got to his feet. All his life, extensive thought had been his friend. Then, the point in which everything had split in two, a before and an after. Enemies had turned friends, and friends had stabbed him in the back so thoroughly that it still hurt. That some days, he only took the steps towards the bathroom out of reflex, while his mind stayed behind somewhere. Those days made him feel like a rusty ship, too broken to be neither here nor there but held together by some unnamable higher force. Ready to tear apart any minute and turn to dust.  
He accommodated.  
He entrusted someone else with his life.  
And he fell back into old habits.

The shirt he pulled over his head was black, and tight, and accentuated every rib of his. His eyes followed their sharp lines, counting them. Twenty-two, the set as full as it would ever be. He did not linger on the hole in his side. There was no use in lamenting it, or the faint glow of the pulmonode under his skin. Making a mental note to have it checked sometime soon, he ran his fingers over his face. Realized he still had a few days until his beard would grow too long to be comfortable.  
He would have to ask for a razor, too.  
His wrists twitched with phantom pain as he turned around. Reminded himself of the routine again. One foot in front of the other. _Stay on the safe path, don't stray, don't think outside the well-worn ways._ She would not be awake yet. Nobody would come to save him from drowning in his own mind.  
He pulled up a pair of trousers which hugged the dip under his hipbones. The devil was in the details. In how the world tilted when he was not careful enough. In how easy it was to fall out of a pattern. So he made a point of getting those right. The press of cloth against his hip, and the pressure of a heartbeat in his head, and the weight of a rifle in his palm. This was order to him now: An accumulation of trivialities, a row of beads on a thread that he could follow to safety.

He walked downstairs. All rooms were empty, no clutter, no sound. They did not own much. There was not much to have for either of them. Hux owned his rifle. She owned Hux. In some way, Hux owned her, too. It was too complicated to give it a one-word-name.

_The world was flaking apart, and he tried to put a name to what they were. Not lovers. Definitely not friends. Barely more than acquaintances. He tried to make words stick. He was inside his body, he was not coming out of his body; he was building a life inside his head and he was trying to find something more fitting than_ **allies**.  
He had been dead for four minutes.  
Kylo had been dead for two months.  
And he tried to listen when she spoke, but all he could concentrate on was the descriptor for their relationship. 

Hux stared at the sunlight that crept across the floor as the whole string of triggered memories tangled behind his eyes. He couldn't silence his head, and he couldn't put it to any use, either, so he had to do something different.

He had opted for long range shooting.

\---

It was something he used to be good at, back in the time when he had still been on the battlefield. But when he had taken up the weapon again for the first time, he had to realize that even though part of him still remembered the stance, the rhythm, much more of him had forgotten about it.  
Re-learning it had not been like coming home. It had made him painfully aware of the extent of his fall. Only months of daily training had allowed him to get back in form. To be able to close his eyes and let himself fall back into the blackness of breathing – aiming – shooting, into the complete and utter calm that filled him when he concentrated on the mark.  
Everything about the long range was a flow that let him dismiss the pictures and thoughts that would come up over and over again. He could override them with calculations and estimates, could make the string of memories into a string of numbers.

She understood that.  
He understood, in turn, that she needed her own time. They lived side by side, they made it work. She gave him three bullets each day, and he didn't ask whether she went to sleep before or after sunrise. They did not talk about these things.

The shooting was nothing like the way he had learned it; There were no holographic target, no artificial changes in weather. Instead, he had to get up after every shot to see whether he hit the mark, and hope the ancient rifle would not explode in his hands. He took his time. Felt the heat, the dust, the sweat. Listened to his own breaths and the rustling of insects. There was an emptiness between his bones, and he tried to let something in, fill it up. It was a measure of control. It held the fraying edges of his mind together.

\---

His memories caught up with him in the 'fresher. They always did when he least expected them to. The fact that they had lost everything crept up on him regularly, even though it should be obvious, even though he should be used to it by now. They were living in a shed, somewhere in the Outer Rim. There was no Order anymore, no power, no plan. Whatever they had done had been for nothing in the end. Their lives were intertwined and defined by what they had not been able to rescue.  
Gently, he ran his fingers over the scars on his forearms. Jagged, raised, irregular. He had done it to save her, when they had still thought there was a chance, at least for one of them, to go back and resume life as before. How naïve that had been. How tired he was of reliving his death.

He couldn't bear staring at the scars every day, so he covered them with long sleeves and buttoned cuffs. And yet, he took a certain pride in carrying them, even concealed. Rey had offered to undo them and all their damage one silent night, her voice distant but firm. Hux had declined without hesitating. Afterwards, when she had just turned around and left him, he had stayed awake and wondered. How had the answer come so easily and so surely? It had taken him weeks to figure it out, to realize it was about the person he had become. Undoing the scars would mean undoing who he was now, and that was impossible. There was no persona to go back to. The General, long gone. The Emperor, overthrown. The prisoner and hostage, left behind for the sake of his mind's stability.

Hux shook his head violently. Reminded himself that they were alive. Were safe. All the other thoughts were sent back into the darkness where they belonged until they would be forgotten.  
He left the refresher feeling slightly better. Dressed quickly, in clothes more fitting the local style than his uniform-like shooting apparel. Finally made his way downstairs, hoping to lure Rey out of bed with fresh caf.  
As he waited for the water to boil, he leaned against the kitchen counter and watched the two suns climb higher in the sky. They were far off the beaten track, so even if anyone was looking for them, which he doubted for several reasons, they probably wouldn't be found. He wasn't even sure how the settlement closest to them was called, or if it had a name at all.

Rey woke up around the middle of the day, while Hux was cleaning his rifle. He could feel her mind kick in gear, the sharp surge of panic (Hux, where is Hux, where are we, where am I?) followed by a forced silence. Hux didn't mean to pry like this, but they were too close. Rey had made her space in Hux's head, and it was fine, it had to be fine. It was not like Hux had any choice in that.  
Her presence inside his mind uncurled, searched, calmed down. A ritual. A pattern.  
A moment later, her steps on the stairs. Hux looked up just when she entered the kitchen.  
Rey looked older than she should have. There were deep lines around her eyes, in the corners of her mouth. White strands in her hair.  
She looked younger than she should have. Moved slowly, setting her feet in pattern much like Hux did, as if the world was going to fall apart if she made a mistake. Insecure. Small.  
He put his rifle aside and pushed his half-full mug of caf towards her. She took it without a word of thanks, took a sip. He watched her adjust to the day as she figured out whether it was a good one or a bad one. For a moment it hung in balance, ready to tip into either direction. Then her face softened and she sat down next to him. A good day, then. Or as good as it could get. Sometimes it scared Hux how easily he could read her mood, and how dependant he was on it. He pushed that feeling away, too, to be forgotten.

For a long time, they sat unmoving and in silence. Alone, Hux would have lost his mind. With Rey, it felt nothing but right. He watched her while she drank her caf. Her fingers, which were rough and covered in cuts and bruises, two of them taped together. He would not ask when she had broken them. Her skin, tinted golden. The past weeks had been good ones, she had been outside, had sat in the sun, moved around most days. She turned pale quickly when she stayed inside. He wished he didn't know that. He was sure she wished she didn't know that he couldn't be left alone when shaving. That was how things were between them, complicated, an abundance of uncomfortable truths. They had earned every single one of them.

Rey had put her thoughts in order by the time she had finished the caf. He knew because it was another routine.

_He used to be the one with the plans. He used to have his every step, and the step of everyone under him, planned out days in advance. Had backup plans. His brain used to be like an elaborate game of holochess. He simply could not afford that any more. He could not think more than a few hours into the future. So she did that for him._

“We are almost out of food.”  
Hux didn't ask how she knew that. He had watched her often enough, seen her make lists, count and re-count when the memories of guilt would not stop screaming. She had counted the stairs, the stars in the sky, his scars. One desperate night, the grains of salt.  
On her better days, she used the counting and measuring as a way to keep their household running. She was listing what they needed, giving exact amounts and prices. The part of her that wanted to survive was much stronger than her urge to leap into the void. Hux wished he could say the same about himself.

_Some days his wish to die was so strong that he could not make it out of the bed. That he had killed himself a thousand times over within his mind before he even opened his eyes. That he almost wished he had not been saved. But he owed her. He would always owe her. And since he was everything she had left, it was his obligation to stay._

He was caught up, half in his thoughts and half in the way her hair fell, when Rey looked at him. Looked him straight in the eye. Broke a pattern they had established. They lived side by side. They did not live together, or barely so. There was no intimacy between them, despite the fact that she knew his every thought and he could feel her heartbeat in his mind.  
But there she was, looking at him as if he meant something in her world other than shared misery.

And then the moment was over and she averted her gaze and he felt as if something between them had shifted, and he did not like it at all.

\---

The basket weighed heavily against his right arm, despite being empty. The weakness in it was entirely his own fault, nobody else to blame for it. It did not help with his frustration. To distract himself, he pulled the cloth over his face higher up so it rested against the bridge of his nose. Further ahead, Rey was waiting for him. Her head was tilted back, and the suns reflected on the few inches of skin visible between the veils covering her hair and the lower half of her face.

She had always shown more patience with him than he deserved. Even back when they both had been prisoners in the same cell, and he had been nothing but bitterness and anger. She should have tried to fight him. He knew there was a fire within her that only wanted to consume everything in its path. But she had not. She should have left him for dead the way they had planned to. But she had not. And she should not have spent months, years really, trying to rebuild him. But she had.

He was too old to catch up with her for long, his knees clicking, his beaten, semi-broken body ready to fail under him any second. Held upright by his will and the routine. He could tell himself, _Just another hour_ and know it was true.

It was not far to the market, yet far enough to make them outsiders. Far enough to make people watch them when they walked past. Hux's skin crawled under their scrutinizing gazes. He envied Rey's easy way of slipping through the crowd, of turning unassuming. All he could do was to move in her steps, turn into her shadow. Stand next to her, tall and quiet, while she bargained. Switch arms when the weight of the basket became too much for his left hand. Remind himself of the name he used when he had to interact with strangers.  
Evan.  
A name like a bruise.

_He had to choose a name. It was that or using his real name, and the latter was not an option. But there was only one word dancing around in his head, and it was one he could hardly even think. A name that flickered, Ben to Kylo and Kylo to Ben. There were other ones, of course, but he could carry none of them. Brendol, Thrawn... All worthy names, yet not his. He thought that the name he would use should cut him, at least a bit. That it should make him feel something; That that something should not be agony.  
In the end, he had settled on the man who had made him general. The first person he had loved, and the one whose death had broken his heart so thoroughly that he had gone and drowned himself in work for years to come. The memory of Evan still hurt, but it did so in a way that could almost be called gentle. Just a reminder that he was alive, and had been someone, once._

Rey had called herself Breha. Hux wondered whether she knew the history behind the name, but did not have the guts to ask. He had only ever asked her one thing, to leave him, and she had stayed every single time. A routine. He held onto that as she filled the basket with fruit and grains, paid with what little she made repairing the villagers' household items. Her hands, like his mind, needed to be occupied at all times. It was why she gestured extensively as she lowered the price of some spice with a few choice words.

It was why some nights, when she could not fall asleep, he heard her take half the house apart.

\---

_They were two sides of one coin. Two halves of the same fate. You could not share a cell for six weeks and watch each other grow hollow without it creating a bond. Maybe that was even truer for them, both having been betrayed by the same person. For Hux, Emperor: A coup. For Rey, Jedi: A trap.  
Hux had never quite understood about the Sith until the day he was tortured beyond the point he could endure and Kylo had framed it as a necessity. He had not quite understood about the Jedi either until Rey had set his nose despite hating him._

They did not talk on their way back. There was not much to say. They saw the same things, as they went everywhere together. Both of them made a point of not bringing up the past. What remained were quiet admissions and platitudes, a pattern of banalities they exchanged. The weather, things they needed, friendly but meaningless questions about the other's well-being. Rey walked closer to him, knowing that his body could give in at any point, that it had a habit of doing so. A joint clicking out of place, his breath coming too short. The pulmonode he used was good enough to keep him alive, but too old to be without flaws.  
On the rare occasion when he could not make it all the way, Rey stayed with him. As if she was scared that he, too, might vanish. She never talked about Poe Dameron, about Finn or Leia Organa or Luke Skywalker. He only knew about her loss because her dreams crept into his mind some nights and he had to see. Had to feel the emptiness that remained when their warm presences were snubbed out. It was the darkness that haunted her and made it impossible for her to search for even the faintest of pulses.  
He had not once seen her meditate since their flight.

\---

Day went down to dusk, the first of the suns touching the horizon and turning the light a soft orange. Hux sat outside, his face turned towards the last rays, trying to calm his mind and find some measure of peace. A few yards away, Rey was tinkering about. Metal clicking against metal, distinct. A habit.

Their evenings had a tendency towards the claustrophobic. No places to go, nothing to do. Only him and her. Only their closed off rooms, their shared spaces, patterns they went through night after night. Both trying to keep their minds away from memories they did not want to touch in the darkness. Rey created, repaired, her hands at work.

_In the beginning, Hux had used the empty moments to strengthen his atrophied muscles. Rebuild as much as possible, even though the prognosis for his left arm had been bad, even back then. Still, he had hoped.  
He had lot that hope after the first year. His hands were not strong enough to be of help. His head clinging to old pains that made engineering impossible. Whatever he had had, he had lost._

 

When the second sun went down, Hux made his way upstairs.

It was like his morning routine backwards. He took off his shirt and trousers, folded them neatly and set them on a stool in the corner. Pulled up the black trousers he slept in, the oldest habit he still entertained. Felt them settle against his thighs and hips and breathed a bit easier when nothing in their fit had changed.  
He went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth. Averted his eyes to not look at his own face too closely, afraid he might now recognize the man he saw there, or only barely. Know the beard, maybe, and the outline of the nose, but not the other parts. He could not say what would be worse, seeing himself and not know the face or seeing only a patchwork re-do of who he thought he was.  
So he avoided it altogether.  
Instead, he ran a hand over his clavicles. Felt the joints in his shoulder and elbow click, shift, settle like an old house. Changed, maybe. But still there. Still his body. _His body._ He repeated that thought as he turned off the lights, walked over to his bed, fit himself into his place as he curled up. Closed his eyes.

His days always followed the same pattern, and he was careful not to break it.

 

But sometimes, it did break.

\---

He almost did not hear the knocking over his own racing mind. Over the old pictures, the pain that would not dull, not even after almost a decade. Kylo's face, that was not Kylo's any more than the sweet dark words were. Because Kylo had been dead at that point already. And Hux had not noticed, he had not known, and the fact that he had been delirious was no excuse for that, and he could not breathe, gods he could not breathe and only taste the blood in his mouth, and...

Another knock, sharper, before the door opened. A crack so sharp it drew him out of his drowning.

Hux did not turn to look who was stalking towards him. Whose weight shifted the mattress.  
They did not do this. Did not save each other from nightmares, not usually. But they had broken so many rules already, he thought. What was one more. What mattered all their habits, their patterns, when they both might find peace, even just for one night, by shattering them.

Rey settled her hand over the hole in his ribcage. A counter-pressure to the pulmonode that expanded in regular intervals in lieu of his second lung. Her breath against the back of his neck, her warmth against him.

Hux closed his eyes, and waited, and felt the gentle pressure against his thoughts that slowly, steadily, extinguished them.  
It used to feel like death.  
Now, it only calmed him.


End file.
